A Tale of Two Ex-Candidates

Bernie Sanders has been putting his money where his mouth is.  After withdrawing as a presidential candidate form the Democratic primaries,  Sanders has sent out a fundraising letter for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), an organization he did not have a good relationship with back in 2016.  But with Hillary Clinton gone and a different chairman running the DNC this time, Sanders should be more comfortable doing the DNC's bidding.  And he's happy to do it; he's helping his friend Joe Biden in his presidential bid, and he's doing it also to stop Donald Trump. 

"My campaign for president may be over, but our struggle continues," Sanders' letter says.  "That struggle begins with defeating Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history, but it does not end there. I will also be doing everything in my power to elect strong progressives at every level of government.  That is why I am about to ask you to join me by making a donation to the Democratic Unity Fund today."

Sanders is doing this to urge his supporters to vote for Biden, which, despite all the grumblings from Bernie bros, should be easier to do than get them to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  He's made good on his promise of supporting the eventual nominee, an he's stepping up to the plate.

Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg, who gave a one-time donation of $18 million to the DNC and also gave the Democrats offices from his now-defunct campaign in states that Trump won in 2016, is turning his attention to the coronavirus. He is donating $10 million to help New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to not only test more people for the virus but also pursue contact tracing so the three states can trace the virus back to original carriers and try to get everything under control so more places in the three states should open.  He should be doing this in all fifty states . . . no, he shouldn't, because the federal government should be doing that.  On the other hand, if Bloomberg pays for contact tracing for the whole country, that would, in a de facto sense, make him President a job he wanted, while Trump continues to dither.  

Bloomberg may still have plans to help Joe Biden in the coming fall campaign that he hasn't publicized yet, and he is rumored to be planning to share information with the Biden campaign.  We'll see about that.